


Who Can Turn The World On With Her Smile?

by seimaisin



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-15
Updated: 2004-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin/pseuds/seimaisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter where he goes, Jack can’t escape the newfound silence. (Post-"Heroes".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Can Turn The World On With Her Smile?

For the first time Jack could remember, his cabin was too quiet. He couldn’t hear the motor of the refrigerator kick on without jumping …

 _“Jack, do you ever clean this place?”_

 _“What? There’s no mold, it’s clean!”_

 _“Honestly. Don’t be so sure about the mold – have you looked in the refrigerator yet?”_

 _“I try not to. As long as there’s beer in the cooler and fish in the lake, I’m perfectly happy. Want a beer, Doc?”_

 _She’d tried to look exasperated, but the little lines around her eyes indicated amusement. “As long as you have real beer, and not just some Budweiser shit.”_

 _He donned an offended expression. “What kind of heathen do you take me for?”_

… couldn’t walk down the dock without concentrating too hard on the echoing sounds of his own footsteps.

 _“Don’t be such a crybaby, Jack.”_

 _“How in the world did you end up with more fish than me?”_

 _"What, you didn’t think I’d never fished before, did you? My ex-husband owned a boat; we spent most of our summers out on the lake.”_

 _“I’d rather not hear about your ex-husband, thanks.”_

 _“Well, then, come on along here and help me forget him.”_ It was the kind of outrageous line only she could pull off, softening her voice into that honeyed drawl that he heard in his sleep, even when she wasn’t there.

He knew General Hammond had his best interests at heart (“Jack, take some time. You’ve been through a lot.” Had there been a double meaning there? Did Hammond know the whole truth, the whole tragedy of the damned thing? Jack couldn’t tell), but in the end, the winter wonderland of northern Minnesota was making him crazy.

So, one morning, three days after he’d arrived, he threw his suitcase into the little Japanese SUV he’d picked up when he arrived and found the highway that led back to the Twin Cities. He’d intended to go straight to the airport, book a flight back to Colorado, and get back to work … but, somehow, in the hours he spent staring at the barren Minnesota landscape, he realized he couldn’t go back. Not yet. Maybe he was turning into a coward in his old age, but going back to Colorado would mean he’d be obligated to see people. Obligated to go over to Carter’s house, where, last time he’d been there, Cassie had been curled up on the bed in the guest room, refusing to look at him. Jack really didn’t blame her. If it were possible, he wouldn’t look at himself in the mirror right now.

When he reached Minneapolis, he found himself detouring into downtown. After cursing at the city traffic for a few minutes, he finally noticed one of the ritzy hotels lining Nicollet Mall, featuring a pack of crazy men in business suits huddled in the entryway, alternately blowing puffs of cold air and cigarette smoke. Idiots, indulging in the old boys brotherhood at the expense of their health – Jack remembered a couple of smoking lounges inside, from the last time he stayed there. With Janet. Oh, god. He felt a brief flash of pain, nearly a physical punch to his chest, but without thinking, he pulled into the driveway and let the valet boy take custody of his rental SUV. A minute later, he had a room, for whatever good that did him.

The hotel room, too, was quiet, even with HBO showing some damned Jim Carrey movie or another. The perfectly manicured walls seemed to close in on him. A woman in the movie laughed; he turned towards the television, only to see a flash of red hair as the offending actress walked off screen. Jack punched the off button on the remote control violently and left the room before the silence suffocated him. Outside, the temperature was above zero – a veritable heat wave, this time of year in Minnesota – so he jammed his hands into the pockets of his coat and turned left on the Mall, passing the same pack of junior executives on the way, still polluting their lungs and laughing at dirty jokes.

Jack had walked the Minneapolis pedestrian walkway on many an occasion, alone, with Sara, and, during his latest visit, with Janet. In this city, far away from Colorado and Cheyenne Mountain and the Air Force and the Stargate, they could pretend to be normal. Just two people, falling in love.

A couple of blocks up, Jack stared across the street at Peavey Plaza. The large water fountain in front of Orchestra Hall was frozen over, and a lone ice skater practiced spins at its center. The last time he was there, though, early summer was teasing the city; the fountain spilled glistening water over cube-shaped stones, and a jazz band played on a small stage next to the reservoir. He remembered standing on the edge of the street, listening to the saxophone over the roar of passing buses. They blended in perfectly with the easygoing crowds of professionals, stopping for a beer and music before heading home to their families. His arms wrapped around Janet’s shoulders, and not for the first time, he marveled at the way her body fit with his. Her small frame molded to his, and she leaned back into him. He could feel her chest vibrate as she hummed along with the music.

 _“We should bring Cassie here. I think she’d love it. She was complaining about how lame Colorado Springs is.”_

 _“Somehow, I can’t see Cassie coming all this way for a jazz band."_

 _“You’d be surprised. Some days, the sounds coming from her bedroom give me a migraine. Other days, I hear Ella Fitzgerald or Johnny Cash. I think she’s still enjoying all the different cultures she can find here on –“ Janet stopped herself, looking around at the crowd. “Here,” she finished. Jack knew what she meant, and that was all that mattered._

Cassie had reacted very oddly to their relationship. They’d kept it a secret for so long, afraid to disrupt their careers or Janet’s still occasionally tentative relationship with her daughter. When they’d finally told her, Cassie threw a holy hissy fit. Her relationship with Jack had been irrevocably altered – where he’d once been a hero in her eyes, he was now a threat, someone not to be trusted. He never quite figured out why. Maybe the moody teenager was offended that she hadn’t been in on the secret from the beginning, or maybe she thought Jack was taking her only family member away from her. She certainly never deigned to enlighten him, and any time he asked Janet about it, she simply hummed and told him that she was “working on it.” Whatever the reason, it hurt. Not quite as badly as Charlie, but too close for his comfort. Although he and Cassie came to a tentative truce, their friendship was never the same.

Carter had been charged with the painful duty of telling Cassie about Janet’s death. Jack had been laid up at the time, still unable to deal with his own physical and emotional wounds to even think about the teenager. When he finally saw her again, Cassie refused to speak to him. The moment he appeared in Carter’s house, she ran to her bedroom and locked the door. Carter managed to open the door, but Cassie remained in a fetal position on the bed, facing the wall, her eyes squeezed shut. Carter could do nothing but shrug sadly at him – she was one of the few people who knew about his relationship with Janet, but she had no place in the middle of anything. There would be no mutual comfort for either Jack or Cassie. The one woman who could have healed that rift was lost forever.

Jack shook his head, willing himself back to the present. A bus chugged past, temporarily obscuring his view of the plaza. When it was gone, the skater had left the ice, leaving only a homeless man sitting on one of the fountain stones, wrapped in blankets and waving a Styrofoam cup at passing pedestrians. Jack crossed the street and dropped a five in the cup. No person should have to rely on the Minnesota streets during the winter. “Go get a coffee at Starbucks,” he said to the man, who merely nodded his thanks, picked up his blankets, and ambled off.

He wandered further up the Mall, without a destination, just to clear the fog that seemed to have claimed a permanent home in his brain. The biting cold almost worked, until he found himself standing in front of the IDS Tower. The glass walls of the skyscraper reflected the gray, dingy snow that was the hallmark of a Minnesota winter. During the summer, though, the building shone like a lighthouse in the middle of the city.

 _“Oh my god, it’s the Mary Tyler Moore building!”_

 _Jack smiled indulgently. “Actually, I think her apartment was supposed to be in Uptown. They used a building over by the University as the exterior, though. Don’t ask me how I know that. It’s required knowledge around here, or something.”_

 _She rolled her eyes. “No, this was the building in the opening credits! You know, where she spun around and threw her hat!”_

 _“Oh. Yeah, I guess it was.”_

 _“I wish I had a hat.” But, even without the proper accessories, Janet executed a whimsical twirl outside of the revolving doors, earning looks from passers-by that ranged from amused to confused. Jack watched her, red hair ruffling in the summer breeze, mouth curved in a relaxed smile that he rarely saw inside the base. At that moment, he knew he was in love. And, wow, didn’t love feel a lot easier this time around._

He never cried. The damned psychologist told him it would be healthier if he cried. God knows if the man found out about their relationship, or if he was just used to the strangely intimate friendships the Stargate program fostered. Maybe it was common knowledge; maybe his fellow officers and coworkers were more discreet than he gave them credit for. He’d told the man to fuck off, anyway. It wasn’t as if he was a novice in mourning someone he loved.

One thing was for sure, though. He’d learned his lesson. His heart stayed in his chest, period. This whole bit, having it ripped out and presented to him in a still-beating, bloody mess, was for the fucking birds.

Jack turned away from the IDS Tower, only to be faced with a statue across the street. There, on the corner, in front of Marshall Fields’, stood a stone likeness of Mary Tyler Moore, tossing that stupid hat into the air for all eternity. Next to her, one bundled young woman, dressed remarkably like the statue in a fashionable coat and scarf, beamed at her boyfriend as he snapped a picture. There, a moment, frozen in time, proof that women still dreamed of being successful and joyful, of having the world. Nothing could go drastically wrong in Mary’s world. She would always win. She would never suffer defeat. She would never end up bleeding and broken on the ground of some planet light-years away, feeling the life drain out of her while the man who loved her lay helpless, out of sight, with no chance to even say goodbye.

 _“We’re playacting here, you know, Jack. We aren’t normal people.”_

 _“I know. But, can’t we pretend for a little while longer?”_

 _“Sure. But only if you buy me a tulip from that street vendor over there.”_

 _“Are you kidding? I’ll buy you the whole damned stand.”_

In the middle of a frozen city, the gates finally opened, and he cried, tears freezing to his cheeks for a moment and a woman he’d never have again.


End file.
